Come celebrate the release of Dharma Pharmacy & Surf Shop, by Kevin Opstedal, the latest publication from Bird & Beckett, a knock-out pamphlet by the Venice-born and -raised, and long-time Santa Cruz-based poet, publisher, and documenter of the dream. Opstedal’s history of Poetry, Poets and Community in Bolinas, from 1967 to ’80, Dreaming as One, is essential reading, as are the many magazines (Gas: High Octane Poetry, plus various one-shots) and small books he has edited and published for decades (Blue Press, and other shorter-lived imprints). Opstedal’s poems have been collected over the years in myriad small pamphlets, and thicker volumes, Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, 1999), California Redemption Value (Uno Press, 2011), and Pacific Standard Time (Ugly Duckling, 2016). Duncan McNaughton writes: “Reading the swells, reading the sets—everse bathymetric with the words of The Poems given him in good faith. No one else in my acquaintance—other than Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Hart Crane, Charles Olson—has done so as finely than has Kevin Opstedal.”

“For decades Kevin Opstedal has kept the underground lit as prolific poet, surfer, printer of books by many and correspondent to all. A chameleon of classic styles, his poems are as vital as the water we drink. Filtered through a wave of narcotic clarity and witful nonchalance, Pacific Standard Time shows us that he’s capable of doing whatever the poem asks, any time / any place,” notes Micah Ballard, who will be sharing the stage on this date, celebrating the release of his own latest full-length collection, Busy Secret (FMSBW, 2024). Ballard, born in Baton Rouge, and based in San Francisco since he enrolled in the Poetics Program at New College a quarter century ago, has done much the same as Opstedal, in his own way, editing and publishing with Sunnylyn Thibodeaux dozens of books and several one-shot magazines under the Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions imprints. He’s got a cache of chaps to his name, including Daily Vigs, from Bird & Beckett (2019), and a few thicker books as well, including Afterlives (Bootstrap, 2016), Waifs & Strays (City Lights, 2011), and Parish Krewes (Bootstrap, 2009). Norma Cole once said, “”We ‘exit through a trap door’ like Orpheus through the silvered mirror. We are pirates, inmates, benefactors, ghosts. We are always on the move, on a journey remembering to chart and map the future, the poems, Waifs and Strays, a magical gift to give away. This is a breathtaking book of evocations, provocations, revelations.” It’s true, too, about Busy Secret–even more so–his best book yet.